


Shift, Refresh

by robocryptid



Series: On the Shifting Center Line [2]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst and Porn, Bounty Hunters, Breathplay, Hopeful Ending, I Hope These Are Not Your Role Models, It Gets Better, M/M, Morning After, Oral Sex, Porn with Feelings, Prostate Massage, Under-negotiated Kink, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-10
Updated: 2019-07-10
Packaged: 2020-06-26 03:02:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19759258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/robocryptid/pseuds/robocryptid
Summary: There are worse ways to start the morning after than with the walk of shame. It's not at all what Hanzo planned, but it might be what he deserves.





	Shift, Refresh

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CorvidFightClub](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CorvidFightClub/gifts).



> Disclaimer: Since I am sometimes asked: you have my blanket permission to podfic, translate or remix my stuff, make fan art, make fanmixes, etc. -- basically anything that qualifies as transformative works! You don't have to ask me. The only thing I do ask is that you share it with me, because I wanna see/hear/read it! 
> 
> What you do not have permission to do is wholesale copy and repost my fic to a different platform, such as a third-party app that profits from free fan labor. If you are reading this on an app like that, I assure you AO3's website on mobile is perfectly robust, allows downloads of fics for offline reading, has a [dark mode skin](https://archiveofourown.org/skins/929), and isn't trying to scam you by offering premium services that change nothing.#
> 
> \--
> 
> Written for Corvid's birthday. 
> 
> Also, while this is a sequel to [On the Shifting Center Line](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18675787), you don't have to have read that one to read this. But if you _did_ read that one, the reason this is its own fic instead of a third chapter is that there's a pretty huge shift in tone (mind the tags!). You can go on enjoying the first without getting into this one, because they might as well be different stories.
> 
> Thank you to mataglap and coinin for the beta job!

#

When Hanzo wakes, he's alone. It isn't surprising, and he tells himself that he cannot be disappointed about a result he expected.

McCree owes him nothing. Hanzo thought there might have been more to it, but he can admit they still know hardly anything about each other. Perhaps McCree is sentimental, or perhaps he is simply lonelier than sex alone might cure and Hanzo’s willingness to play along was a welcome distraction for an evening.

Whatever meanings the sex had are those he attached to it, and there was never a guarantee it would mean the same to McCree. He knew what he was doing, and he has no claim to anything more than he has already gotten.

He has nearly convinced himself he does not care when there’s a click and whir, the sound of a keycard activating the lock, and McCree enters. He smells like smoke, and Hanzo works hard to neither look relieved nor feel it particularly strongly.

McCree grins at him, although he seems tired, a little rawer around the eyes and mouth than he was last night. Hanzo wonders if he slept poorly.

“There you are,” McCree says as if Hanzo was the one who wandered off.

Hanzo has some vague thoughts about getting dressed and having breakfast. He wonders if McCree will stay in bed with him if he orders room service. But he holds his tongue, and he isn’t sure why.

McCree sits on the edge of the bed, twisting toward Hanzo to run fingers along his tattooed arm. The dragons themselves react as if they are simple house cats McCree has pet, pleased by his touch. 

“Yakuza, right?” He says the word strangely; the pronunciation is more correct than Hanzo would have expected from him. 

“Formerly.”

“Didn’t know that was a gig you could just walk away from.”

Hanzo laughs, and he can’t entirely conceal the bitterness. “It is easier for some than others. But there is a reason I don’t often work in Japan.”

McCree nods and doesn’t laugh with him. “I’m familiar with some of that myself.”

There’s a moment where McCree’s gaze lingers on his arm, then drifts to his face. Hanzo doesn’t know why he feels so on edge, but he doesn’t care to linger on it when there are other feelings to indulge. “Come here,” he says, and he turns his hand over to catch on McCree’s arm and give a gentle pull. 

McCree doesn’t follow, but he does slip his fingers down until he has Hanzo’s hand in his, a thumb running over his knuckles. “You ever gonna tell me your name, sweetheart?” His mouth twitches wryly. “The real one?”

Hanzo realizes that he knows McCree’s name already, and it might put them on more even footing. Still, he hesitates before he says it, because every piece of the truth, especially now with the daylight filtering in, brings him another step closer to revealing a past he has thus far been able to avoid thinking about in McCree’s company. 

“Hanzo,” he answers right as it appears McCree’s going to look away.

“Hanzo,” McCree repeats slowly. The sound of his name in McCree’s mouth sends a bolt through him, pleasure and trepidation mingling uncomfortably together. “How common’s a name like that?”

“It is old-fashioned, but not unheard of.”

McCree laughs a little, then he turns away. Hanzo’s hand already feels cold. “Name’s Jesse, but somethin’ tells me you already knew that.”

He wants to make a joke, but his whole body feels too tense, mouth going dry for no reason he can name. McCree has his back to him. He sighs at his phone then tosses it on the floor, then he bends down farther. Part of Hanzo would like to believe he’s simply taking off his shoes to come back to bed, but he finds himself distressingly unsurprised when McCree turns to face him again, a gun trained on him. 

“And how ’bout your family name, sugar?” To his credit, McCree does not look especially pleased by the situation. 

Hanzo feels almost resigned. It stings, but it’s the outcome he should have expected. He doesn’t answer. 

“What are the odds there’s another yakuza with a blue dragon tattoo, left arm only, around my age, named Hanzo?” McCree cocks the gun. “C’mon, what’s the rest of it?”

Hanzo is still naked, and he is not sure he can move before the gun goes off. This close, he’s not sure the chances are high that McCree will miss. He wonders idly if the dragons would even attack McCree after the way they preened under his attention earlier. 

“Shimada,” Hanzo answers through gritted teeth, and McCree’s eyes narrow. It’s enough confirmation. “I’m curious: what is the payout?”

McCree snorts, but confusion flashes across his face before his features harden again. “What makes you think a dead man deserves answers?”

“You have not pulled the trigger yet. Humor me. Last I looked, it was not very high. Especially not for a man willing to lose out on two million dollars just to get laid.” McCree flushes at that, but he doesn’t argue the point. “So what are my family paying you?”

“This ain’t about money.”

It’s Hanzo’s turn to be confused. He wonders if he should be relieved that McCree is not so easily turned by money, but he’s not convinced it doesn’t mean something _worse_. “Then what? Was the sex inadequate?”

“Cute.” McCree does not look amused. His grip tightens on the gun. “Is this some fucked up way to get to him?”

“Get to _who_?”

It must sound sincere, because McCree’s face goes through a complicated series of emotions, and the tip of the gun dips with his uncertainty. “Genji,” he says flatly, and it’s like being tossed headfirst into freezing water. 

Hanzo’s mouth tastes like rot, and his grip on reality feels tenuous at best. It takes several shaking breaths to steady himself before he can speak. “Where did you hear that name?”

This too must seem genuine, because McCree looks less sure of himself by the second, although he still refuses to give Hanzo an answer. “I asked first, and I got the gun. Did you do this to get to him?”

“Do what?” He realizes what McCree means only after the question is out. He doesn’t laugh, but there’s something trying to escape his chest and the sound is close enough. “You came on to me.”

“Yeah, the first time. Then _you_ tracked _me_ down.”

“I assure you there are more direct ways of getting to my brother, if that is what I wanted.” He searches for something to say. “My motives were about as complicated as yours.” 

Several things at once flicker across McCree’s face, muddling his expression to the extent that it’s unreadable. “I _liked_ you,” he says, and it sounds like an accusation.

“I know.” It’s stupid, makes Hanzo more vulnerable than he already is, but he closes his eyes for just a moment, long enough to get his bearings. When he opens them again, he’s walled off the vulnerability, and he finds he no longer cares how McCree knows his brother. He only wants to be finished. “Shoot me or don’t. I am tired of talking.”

McCree doesn’t shoot him. He disappears, and Hanzo is left to stew in the mess they made. 

It aches in ways he did not expect, yet it is still a better fate than he deserves.

Hanzo does not see him again for three months, and it happens entirely by accident. He’s planning to ignore McCree. Get in, finish the job, get paid, get out. But McCree arrives first, and he’s in over his head, and Hanzo puts an arrow through the eye of the man McCree never saw coming. 

Three months is long enough for the bitterness to take root, but McCree is Genji’s friend and so Hanzo won’t leave him to die. It’s the only reason he lets himself think about. 

He doesn’t think about why it drives him to drink later either, or why of all the bars in this city, McCree has to show up to the same one. McCree is wary, but he says thank you. They dance around it, and they don’t speak about the times they spent together before. Later, they find the nearest motel and McCree keeps one hand over Hanzo’s face while they fuck, like McCree has things he wants to hide from himself too. 

When it’s over they agree it was the last time. 

Four weeks later, Hanzo’s in St. Petersburg chasing another bounty, and McCree returns the favor by dropping six men at once. McCree is still angry, but he’s also a sentimental fool. Hanzo isn’t angry anymore at all. He’s resigned to it, because there’s at least a grim satisfaction in knowing McCree can’t seem to turn him down.

They barely make it away from the scene of the fight before Hanzo licks the gunshot residue off McCree’s gloved fingers then guides them to his throat. McCree pins him to a wall, fingers squeezing until every breath is dizzying and not enough, and he licks into Hanzo’s gasping mouth and jerks him off with a smooth metal hand. 

It’s dangerous, stupidly so, but it also feels like penitence for the things he’s done. McCree no longer seems to believe Hanzo seduced him that second time; he seems more like he doesn’t know _what_ to believe. That’s not Hanzo’s fault, but he’ll accept the blame for that too.

This is another last time that isn’t. 

In Córdoba, McCree holds Hanzo’s wrists so tight that Hanzo feels the bones shift and grind, and he gets Hanzo off on his fingers. Just that: wrists pinned, long fingers stuffed to the knuckle, massaging his prostate until Hanzo is shaking and cursing at him. It’s the first time since learning his name that McCree seems to really see him; he watches every expression like he’s looking for cracks in Hanzo’s armor. There’s no hiding from it, but Hanzo isn’t sure he wants to. 

When he comes, it feels like it lasts forever, and McCree doesn’t remove his fingers until Hanzo is twitching with overstimulation.

It’s the last time McCree tries to convince either of them it’s the last time. 

For such a violent man, McCree isn’t usually rough. Hanzo can sense it when he pushes him too far, right to the point of snapping, and McCree paradoxically grows softer, pets hands over skin the way he did when he still didn’t know who Hanzo was. The reminder makes Hanzo’s heart ache, because he knows what it felt like to have McCree’s affection, instead of this thing laced with guilt and anger.

He wonders what it would be like if he was honest right away. He knows in reality that it was only the secrecy that got him to this point, that if McCree knew from the start Hanzo would’ve been rejected at best, and McCree would have nothing to be sentimental about now. Nothing to keep him coming back. But even knowing this, Hanzo uses the _what if_ as another way to punish himself. 

At the same time he tells himself that it’s absurd to mourn for a relationship that never began, so he can punish himself for his foolish grief too. 

In San Diego, McCree admits that he finally talked to Genji. That he knows about Genji’s offer of forgiveness. He doesn’t say that he can forgive too, but his hands are gentle even when Hanzo tries to goad him into something rougher. It’s crueler somehow than if he was aggressive, because it feels like a mockery. 

Hanzo’s the one who leaves as soon as they’re finished, unable to bear another minute with the reminder that it could have been — _was_ , so very briefly — different. 

He’s stabilized by the next time they run into one another. He has accepted this for what it is. It feels inevitable, like letting McCree push him to his knees is simply the path of least resistance. 

In Yangon, McCree finds him before the hunt to tell him his intel’s bad. The mark was only supposed to have one bodyguard. He has six, all from the private security company owned by the same woman who hired Hanzo. Some digging and some money transferred to the right hands reveals that she has a tenuous secondhand connection to the Shimada family. 

Instead of doing the job, he spends the evening telling McCree his side of everything that happened with Genji. He talks about the family and the life he left behind. He doesn’t talk about the fight; it’s something he cannot speak aloud, even now.

“He was my victim, but he was not innocent. He could have done the same to me,” is the closest he can get before his throat closes up again. What matters in the moment is that McCree listens.

McCree still seems angry, but it feels directionless now. Hanzo’s only the release valve, no longer the cause. He thinks maybe he hasn’t been the cause for a while now. McCree leaves bruises shaped like his fingertips all over Hanzo’s hips and thighs, and he all but chokes himself on Hanzo’s cock. Hanzo can’t keep his fingers out of McCree’s hair. 

McCree is still gone by morning. 

In Dubai, Hanzo finds McCree in time to watch him get shot. 

The fury he works so hard to keep in check suddenly spills out, but not before they take a shot at him too. The dragons tear through the group of mercs and don’t leave a single one alive. 

“Did you have to kill ’em all? Really could’ve used an informant,” McCree says. His tone is casual, but it wavers at the end and he’s short of breath.

Their bullet wounds are only grazes, barely even noteworthy on their scarred bodies, but the fear that fueled Hanzo before has not gone away. It seems McCree feels much the same. He rests his forehead on Hanzo’s shoulder and pulls him close. It might be a hug, but the thought makes a lump form in Hanzo’s throat, so he tries not to think about it. 

They go to McCree’s hotel room, and he kisses with both hands on Hanzo’s cheeks. Then his hands are everywhere at once, and he doesn’t let go. “Please,” he says against Hanzo’s skin. “Please,” he repeats, and Hanzo’s not sure McCree knows what he’s asking for either. 

He’s clingy and his mouth won’t stop moving even if it’s mostly nonsense, but he guides Hanzo’s hands until Hanzo understands. 

By the time Hanzo slides inside the tight clench of his body, McCree’s lips are swollen from dragging all over Hanzo’s skin. They move together in a slow wave, and it comes as no surprise to find that McCree’s as good at riding dick as he is at giving it. The surprising part is that he doesn’t stop kissing Hanzo until he’s too breathless to continue. 

When they’re lying together after, Hanzo works his fingers slowly through the snarls he created in McCree’s sweat damp hair. They’re curled around each other like they’re actually lovers, and Hanzo tries to enjoy it without reading into it. He’s mostly successful until McCree’s mouth moves against his brow. “Tell me you’re too stubborn to get killed out there.”

A thousand answers run through his mind. All of them are dangerous in their own way.

It reminds him too much of that night months ago, when Hanzo thought they might _become_ something, only to wake up to McCree’s sudden dose of reality and the barrel of a gun. Before McCree taught him it was possible to feel lonely in the presence of someone else. 

_What do you care?_ lies petulantly on the tip of his tongue. 

“I am,” he says instead.

“Good.” McCree rolls him onto his back. “That’s good,” he breathes against Hanzo’s cheek.

He’s struck again by how much it feels like that night from before, when they traded little details in the dark. When he dared to believe it was the beginning of something. Without his permission, his face crumples and his chest hitches. 

McCree presses a kiss between his knotted eyebrows, then another to his temple, and then his mouth. His kisses don’t stop until Hanzo’s breathing has evened out again. 

McCree doesn’t apologize, but Hanzo’s not convinced that he has anything to apologize for, not when Hanzo has showed up willingly every time. Still, McCree stays well into the next day. Long enough to have breakfast in bed before some other business drags him away. It isn’t an apology, but it feels like one anyway.

The next time they meet, it has been just over a week. McCree splits the bounty with him, and they celebrate with drinks. McCree’s tongue tastes like ash and bourbon, and he kisses the way he did in Dubai: intensely and like it’s the last time. It’s overwhelming and more than a little bit confusing until McCree says, “I don’t wanna lose you.”

There’s only one way McCree _could_ , and it’s one neither of them can control. But Hanzo doesn’t have it in him to say that yet. 

He isn’t sure how they got here from where they started, but he’s too selfish to risk upsetting the balance by asking. McCree kisses his fingers and his palms, then his wrists, then up and up until he reaches Hanzo’s mouth again. 

By the time McCree’s cock begins to slide inside him, Hanzo barely feels as though his body is his own. His skin hums and there’s a tremor in his hands as he grasps at McCree’s back and his arms and his hair, coaxing and guiding him wherever Hanzo wants. Fingers close around Hanzo’s throat again, but this time they simply rest there, holding him in place with his heartbeat in McCree’s hand.

It’s so literal that he laughs, and McCree swallows the sound. Hanzo wonders if this is what people mean when they call it making love. He knows McCree’s body well by now, and McCree can play his like an instrument, and yet this time feels very, very different. 

He gets his answer in the morning when McCree picks out his next job. When McCree reaches for his hand, thumb tracing the ridges of Hanzo’s knuckles. When he says, “I’m sorry,” and “Come with me. Or let me come with you.”

Hanzo feels something loosen inside himself. “Don’t take the job,” he insists, and he gently flips McCree’s tablet over. “I think we have earned a break.”

McCree laughs and looks like he is going to argue, but in the end he must think better of it, because he lets himself be drawn back to bed, then to a bath, then to lunch, then to dinner, and then breakfast again the next day. They’ll have to pick up work again eventually, but for now they whisper more confessions in the dark. The difference is that this time each already knows who the other is.

**Author's Note:**

> I know what I did. Feel free to yell at me in comments or over on Twitter [@robocryptid](https://twitter.com/robocryptid).


End file.
